Holding a global conference online

By Doug Druckenmiller and Larry Philbrook

One of the more ambitious goals of the ICAI 8th Global Conference on Human Development last year in Kathmandu, Nepal, was the idea of the virtual conference.  Virtual conferences have been hyped and promoted as the greatest thing since the development of the Internet and they have also been debunked and pronounced a silly idea. Now that we have some distance from the conference and the experience in both time and space, it may be useful to look at what we designed, what lessons we learned and, what best practices we can recommend for future conferences.

Identifying design requirements

Preparations began a year earlier and involved many people, among them a master’s class in collaboration design at DePaul University with 40 of Dr. Danny Mittleman’s students.  The core technical team included Doug Druckenmiller, Lloyd Philbrook in Bali, Indonesia, and Nimesh Amayata with ICA Nepal in Kathmandu.  We had a volunteer virtual ToP team that eventually formed the core of the virtual conference facilitation group.  They became our Sherpas:  Carolyn Evans, Catherine Tornbom, Cheryl Kartes, Evelyn Philbrook, Jean Watts, Jonathan Bell, Larry Philbrook, Mark Pixley, Nadine Bell, Sunny Walker, Kathy McGrane,  Isabel de la Maza  and Spence Morley.   They participated in most of the design process and helped with the testing and implementation of the system. 

Lessons learnt

We learned a lot about doing the impossible.  A virtual conference in concert with an in-person conference is a very difficult thing to do.  It is like running two conferences at the same time.

1. The collaborative design process involved more than 100 people around the globe in helping to imagine, develop and implement a virtual conference experience.  In hindsight, we got a late start.  Though planning started a year in advance, we ended up with only a few months (September and October) with a developed conference virtual platform that the Sherpas knew how to use. 
2. “Ownership” of the theme by all parties involved must be built in and reinforced by the design: Sherpas, on-site facilitators, theme participants etc.  We need to do formation with each team and with the coordination team, including on-site and virtual elements. We must do this at least six weeks before any group sessions are planned so that they can plan them and own the process and outcomes.
3. Pre-conference virtual presentation sessions, surveys, polls and forums were combined effectively for pre-conference discussions, especially by the Peace theme.  This engaged pre-conference participants in that theme. 
4. Conference virtual theme presentations and live streamed sessions.  This conference was an experiment in combining traditional practitioner workshops around themes with a more academic style of research paper presentation.  The education theme developed a model of working with presenters to create virtual video presentations available on the conference virtual site ahead of the conference sessions using a Pecha Kucha format.
5. Conference technical infrastructure for a virtual conference is easier to manage and deploy but constitutes only about 20 per cent of the challenge.  The electrical and communication infrastructure of Nepal presented unique challenges but a global virtual conference also depends on the capabilities of worldwide infrastructure.  In preparation for the conference, the conference virtual site was maintained on ICA-Nepal’s server, which was outsourced to a reliable company in Canada.  Unknown to us this server company also outsourced their physical server to another company somewhere on the East Coast of North America.  Hurricane Sandy happened on the 1st day of the conference
6. Virtual simultaneity and integration requires a change in presuppositions about conference dynamics – being here becomes a 24 / 7 concept and re-integrating data a constant question – how do we utilize the best of on the ground team with virtual team (1 + 1 = 11) We are still exploring how to create an image of the intention and flow of such a conference

Recommended best practices

1. Collaborative design process needs to start more than a year in advance. 
2. Virtual Sherpa support must match the live conference facilitation support. 
3. Critical virtual infrastructure needs an actionable backup plan. 
4. Technical capabilities present in the target group of participants were what they turned to when they wanted to share their experiences  

We hope this helps explain what was learnt about virtual facilitation and conferences.  One of the main objectives of the Nepal virtual conference was to build the capacity of ICA International for virtual collaboration.  The virtual 8th Global Conference on Human Development was a key milestone in that journey, but the climb up Everest has just begun.  Thank you Sherpas for your guidance.

(The preceding is an excerpt from a US ToP network article. Read the full version at  https://top.memberclicks.net/virtual-global-conference-learning)

Doug Druckenmiller is a Virtual Facilitation Researcher and an ICA USA Board member . Larry Philbrook is immediate past president of ICA International and member of ICA Taiwan.